Pols remember 9/11

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Compton knew something was seriously wrong when she saw White House chief of staff Andy Card approach President George W. Bush in the middle of an event with second-graders in a Sarasota, Fla., classroom. “Nobody ever interrupts the president like that,” she thought. Card later remembered whispering, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”

“I made a sign of an airplane with my hands to Andy Card, who nodded and put up two fingers,” Compton recalled. After Bush delivered an education speech without mentioning the crisis, he and the press returned to Air Force One, which flew to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and refueled.

There, much of the usual press pool was left behind on the tarmac. Among those journalists ditched: Jay Carney, then of Time magazine and now press secretary to President Barack Obama.

“We took off very fast, and they wouldn’t tell us where we were going. We had F-16s off the wing. … I thought, ‘The president has no place to go. He has to run.’ This was the [nuclear] doomsday scenario unfolding,” Compton said.

Dennis Hastert

Then-House speaker (R-Ill.)

Hastert got to the television in his Capitol office just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center. He immediately tried to call Vice President Dick Cheney on a secure phone. But Cheney was unreachable.

And then Hastert saw the smoke. It was curling around the Washington Monument. At that moment, he made a decision: The Capitol was shutting down.

“So next thing I knew, I was in a tunnel between the Capitol and the Rayburn building and stuck in the back of a Chevy Suburban,” Hastert recalled. “I’m shooting out of there, and I’m going across south of Washington heading for Andrews Air Force Base.” When he got to Andrews, he reached Cheney, who told him, “You’re going to an undisclosed location for the day, and we’ll be in touch.”

“Subsequently, I was on a helicopter to an undisclosed location, going across Washington — nothing on the streets,” Hastert said. He continued, “I went from a peace-time speaker — the president went from a peace-time president, worried about transportation and education and health care and all those other things we do — to a wartime speaker. Basically, the president and I made a pact that we weren’t going to let this thing happen again.”

Readers' Comments (3)

Bush first week in the White House: order enforcement of no fly zone in Iraq. These were bombings of Iraq military installations prior to invasion in 2003. It is estimated that 100,000 Iraq citizens died in these bombings. Reason Bush gave: U. S. failed to enforce the fly zone while Clinton was president.

Second action in his first week: Stop involvement of U.S. peace efforts between Palestinians and Israel. Bill Clinton volunteered to continue these efforts, but they were denied by the Bush administration.

Third action he took: All White House meetings would remain a secret until 50 years after his presidency. Reason: he wanted to wage an unnecessary war with Iraq, plus all of the dealings with the Koch brothers, Halliburton and other oil companies.

Bush personally took advantage of Sept 11 to pursue his goal of invading Iraq. He let Osama Bin Laden free.

But most important: George W. Bush was an incompetent President not fit for the Presidency. He could care less about Al-qadea and Osama Bin-Laden. Bush let Osama's brother leave the country shortly after Sept. 11. Bush sent 100 soldiers to capture Bin Laden shortly after Sept. 11 when he was hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan, but then after 2003 sent 100,000 troops to capture Sadam Hussein.

During the 1990s, faults in Koch Industry pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil and chemical spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. According to an August 30, 2010 article in The New Yorker magazine, "In 1999, a jury found Koch Industries guilty of negligence and malice in the deaths of two Texas teen-agers in an explosion that resulted from a leaky underground butane pipeline. (In 2001, the company paid an undisclosed settlement.)

During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company faced liability for three hundred and fifty million dollars in fines, and four Koch employees faced up to thirty-five years in prison.

Off the hook after GWBush became president After George W. Bush became president the U.S. Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, John Ashcroft settled for a plea bargain, in which the company pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction of that amount.

David Uhlmann, a career prosecutor who, at the time, headed the environmental-crimes section at the Justice Department, described the suit as “one of the most significant cases ever brought under the Clean Air Act."

Our fearmongering Kleptocracy can take their "credible but unconfirmed" terror threats and stick them where the sun don't shine. If we are attacked, it will either be (a) yet another false flag psyop to keep the Sheeple submissive as they continue to steal or squander all that we have and hold dear; or (b) payback for America killing millions of innocent people since 9/11 (and long before). I for one will not stand for the former, and regret we have invited the latter.